Contests & Promotions

Prizes are incentive. People enter tournaments not only to play and/or to improve their ratings; they also enter to win prizes. However, getting into the top bracket requires wonderful records with little to no losses. So how can a player who isn’t the greatest at deck tech or the most skilled going to get these prizes? Play Arena

and two booster packs. All this and I only played about an hour and a half a day. The investment was well worth it and I didn’t even have to win very frequently. I’m going to tell all of you how to make the best out of Arena

First, let’s take a gander at what the prizes were to see why you’d actually want to play. This year at Origins, the payoff was pretty darn good. Just for signing up you got a booster of Planeshift or Seventh Edition (both sets aren’t fantastic, but hey, I pulled a Meddling Mage

, top fifteen got two boosters and the top five for the weekend were awarded eight additional booster packs of Planeshift and Seventh. All of these prizes were cumulative. If you were in multiple categories you got all the prizes that applied. Remember, this was for just $5.

’s point system works as follows: You win a game, you receive two points. You lose a game, you receive one point. Essentially, good players will win. The more games you play, the more points you receive. So why shouldn’t people play decks like Tog or Millstone

. Granted, they were successful decks as far as win percentages, only they lacked the speed to play a multitude of games. If you want to walk off with promo cards, you can’t spend half an hour on a single game.

I played with a version of R/G beats that I constantly tweaked as I traded and realized what worked and what didn’t. It wasn’t a consistent winner. I WOULDN’T TAKE IT TO A TOURNAMENT. However, at Arena

early on, or I quickly went fetal due to flying wurm tokens. My games lasted an average of five minutes and I only won a little more than a third of them. Most people played fifteen-minute games.

Let’s think about the points now: two for a win, one for a loss. So, if I’m losing three games in fifteen minutes to an ever changing group of people that’s 12 points an hour for me. However, for everyone else who’s playing fifteen minute games and winning them all, it’s a mere 8 points an hour.

That’s right, I won because I lost! Keep this method up and you’ll always stay on top. Remember though, if you’re going to speed lose, you have to keep playing different people. If you consistently give the same people speed wins, they will come out ahead.

. You have to keep playing and constantly check your points versus others’. Don’t play games with people who are ahead of you in points. They’ll always at least gain one point from the match. Instead, play the new people who’ve just signed up or who’ve been busy playing in tournaments.

Here’s the deck that I played. As you’ll be able to see, it wasn’t that fantastic, but I still came out near the top. Play something faster and more successful and use the above methods and I’m sure you could easily become the convention’s Arena

* My friend Don and I came up with this name, as the deck isn’t as fast as Frog in a Blender, but it functions just the same.

To keep the games short, don’t waste time doing unnecessarily long rituals. Rock-paper-scissors doesn’t require you to reach into your bag to pull out a die to roll to see who plays first. Also, keeping track of life mentally isn’t that hard when the games are shorter than the class hoochie’s skirt. Why paris if you don’t mind losing anyway? Pile-shuffling to avoid mana screw takes much too long. The little things add up so all you have to do is not let them happen to begin with.

were things like the aforementioned Frog on a Spit, Quiet Roar, Burning Bridges and White Weenie. The vast amount of speed can really improve game enjoyment. “Attack, play a creature, go” is a much more entertaining style in Arena

over tournaments. It’s not an anxiety fest. One person I played bribed me with a Cream saver to give him the win. Hey, what’s one less point if you can have a rockin’ mouthful of chocolaty goodness? It’s about entertainment.

is where fun and crazy things can happen in games that aren’t too competitive. I was sitting on no red mana for about three turns with an all red hand, so I decided to drop all six cards to my Wild Mongrel